Carrie Haddad Gallery presents “Americana”, an exhibit that stages concrete and abstract symbols of American values. A striking selection of ballpoint pen drawings, wood and cardboard constructions, painting and photography recall contemporary ‘artifacts’ relating to American history, culture and tradition de ned by previous centuries. The exhibit opens January 25th and remains on view through March 12th. All are welcome to join us for an artists’ reception on Saturday, January 28th, 5-7pm.

Linda Newman Boughton’s life-sized ballpoint pen drawings of notorious Civil War soldiers pay a reverent homage to some of our earliest freedom fighters. Inspired by a collection of photographs taken by Mathew Brady, one of America’s first photographers best known for documenting the Civil War, Boughton imparts a vibration to the memories of historical icons with frenzied, yet contained movements of ballpoint pen.

Static symbols of bravery and courage are softened with Boughton’s touch of whimsy derived from her mundane medium as we revisit a genera on who secured life and liberty for our future. Frank Li o produced a unique series of 3 dimensional wall sculpture deemed The Great American Wheelworks from the early 60s un l the 80s.

Li o’s ingenuity and thorough understanding of the wheelwright craft fools the eye into thinking that the 1/2 inch thick wood and faux metal finishes appear to be deceptively real. John Cross’s hand carved wooden figures may be small in stature, but have big personality!

The artist’s whittlings have personified numerous icons in American pop culture including music, sports, and the arts. David Halliday reaches into his archives of images to compile a selection of both sepia toned photographs mixed with more recent color works; each are iconic representations of the most ordinary objects of everyday life. Together they represent a fading essence of things quintessentially ‘American’.

For the artist, beauty and nostalgia are pervasive, but lamentation has its role as well, particularly at this me having crossed the threshold into the New Year. For anyone raised in the country, Harry Orlyk’s impressionist oil pain tings spark a sense memory that is at once shared and deeply personal.

His work evokes a return to days spent as a kid when you played behind “Old Hap’s Barn”, or played hide-and-seek in the corn eld. If raised in the city, Orlyk’s pain tings illustrate what you fantasized living in the country would be like. With each changing day and season, Orlyk reminds us of the simplistic beauty inherent in rural, small town America. Andrew Buck has always been inspired by landscapes and their ability to embody both abstract and tangible characteristics.

Photographed in a number of rock quarries on the East Coast, the series of Rockface prints are examples of man’s determination to recon figure natural landscapes to cater to our specific needs. Buck photographs the large walls of rock that have been blasted with dynamite and eliminates any evidence of scale to produce a strikingly abstract image. Russell DeYoung bridges the divide between the abstracted and the familiar with the editioned prints, Red, White, and Blue, Upstate, which are inspired by the landscape of impermanence and imperfection the artist observes in his living and working spaces in the Hudson Valley and New York.

Made in collaboration with Flying Horse Editions of Orlando, Florida in 2009, the edition of ten prints, made of professional grade Art Care cardboard, are modeled to replicate DeYoung’s 15x12 constructions of discarded cardboard, which are stitched with string and painted with modi ed latex.

Through the use of modest scale, a limited pale e and plebeian materiality, these works o er an alternative to the bombast nature of recent American culture. Exhibited in pristine white shadow box frames, the work calls a en on to forgo en utilitarian objects and an overtly materialistic society.

Self-taught painter Arthur Hammer is perhaps best known for his work that evoked the WPA style of painting associated with American artists emerging in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Landscapes, industrialized cityscape views, construction machinery and portraiture were among the most commonly painted subjects during his career which spanned more than 40 years.